Welcome To Icarus

The Icarus Project envisions a new culture and language that resonates with our actual experiences of 'mental illness' rather than trying to fit our lives into a conventional framework.

We are a network of people living with and/or affected by experiences that are often diagnosed and labeled as psychiatric conditions. We believe these experiences are mad gifts needing cultivation and care, rather than diseases or disorders. By joining together as individuals and as a community, the intertwined threads of madness, creativity, and collaboration can inspire hope and transformation in an oppressive and damaged world. Participation in The Icarus Project helps us overcome alienation and tap into the true potential that lies between brilliance and madness.

Read Our Mission and Vision statements
Read the Co-Coordinators Organizational Blog
Read our publications online
Visit our community discussion forums
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Icarus t-shirts


International Allies- Report Backs 2011

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Sascha went on a whirlwind tour of Europe this summer meeting with other radical mental health activists and talking about what is happening in their countries. Here are some of their reports as well as reports from Icarus allies in other parts of the world.

2011: Icarista Reportbacks From the Front

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We sent out a call to longtime Icarus members far and wide to tell us a little bit about what they have been up to in 2011and what Icarus means to them. Here's what we heard back....

Icarus 2011: Local Group Reports (US)

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Report backs from Gainesville, Pittsburgh, DC, Seattle, RVA, Madison, Fargo and New Mexico. Also some news from allied groups and projects. Your local group's happenings not listed? Please email us at info@theicarusproject.net and let us know what you've been up to! 

“THE OPPOSITE OF BEING DEPRESSED” an interview with Sascha Altman DuBrul

At this point I’ve read my history. I learned about the European Enlightenment, made sense of where the philosophies of the sub-culture I came from drew their historical understanding. Marxism is in some ways very Biblical. There are a lot of things about Buddhist philosophy that are pretty punk. All of these things eventually overlap. I don’t think there’s any future in de-spiritualized communities, or cultures. You can look at the Left in the United States, and how much better the religious right is at organizing, because they have God on their side. Compare that to my mom in her apartment in Manhattan, reading the Nation magazine. For myself, it came from having what I didn’t realize at the time were spiritual experiences– in the punk scene, with the anarchists...

 

Richmond VA Local Group selling T-Shirts

The Mind(ful) Liberation Project in Richmond, VA - an Icarus-inspired local group - is selling some great "Peer Support Now" t-shirts to fund their distro work. Check em out and buy 1 or 2.

$7 each, get them while you can

Bay Area Icarus Hosts Community Discussion: An Integrative Approach to Madness

"If madness isn’t what biopsychiatry says it is, what is it? If we don’t agree with what biopsychiatry says, then we probably don’t agree with the treatment practices. For us to have some kind of intelligible answer to a first-year psychiatry intern who can tell you: it’s a brain disorder and every minute that it’s not being medicated, there’s irreparable damage being done.  The people who fund the research are the big phama companies that psychiatry represents.  A psychiatrist now can see 30-40 clients a day. Psychiatry says: this group of Icarus folks can sing Kumbaya all you want, but we own it.  I don’t believe that."

UK Screenings of Crooked Beauty

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Crooked Beauty is a poetic documentary that chronicles The Icarus Project's co-founder Jacks McNamara’s transformative journey from psych ward inpatient to pioneering mental health advocacy. It will be screening at 3 festivals in the UK this fall. Come out if you are in England or Scotland!

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